Onyx Javelin

by Steve Wheeler

  Apple, cliff, bread, trout, Ernst, seventy-two, cabbage tree, Veg, penny. And I shall now laser the appended colours and shapes. Yeah, I so like it when you treat us as of inhibited intellect. We found that condescending to say the least as our job as ACEs is to protect the family as well. But you are new and learning still.'

  The dragon nodded and the cat fired a tiny laser burst into one of Harold's eyes and, after matching the codes against his own, Harold let out his breath slowly, knowing that he could at least trust the cat. He nodded and extended one of his hands and opened a fingertip, while the cat did the same, interfacing with him and sending the remaining codes, plus everything that was known about Tengu. His own systems checked and verified the data source codes then allowed it into his conscious mind. He sped himself up, quickly read everything and uploaded the recognition software into the tactical part of his brain. He then looked back towards the school, at the same time maintaining the link to Bing so they could send silent undetectable messages between them.

  'So, Bing, are Reg the pug, the dogs, the panthers and the other cats around us all with you?'

  Bing chuckled. 'Reg thinks of himself as our leader and we let him. And, yes, we are of the one mind in that we love this existence as a member of each of our families and we have no desire to see that balance upset. Tengu is in for a very tough time of things today. Even if he had been replicated - and there may be more of him here today -we will teach him and the Games Board a salient lesson. You do realise that you are the bait in this trap, don't you, Harold?'

  Harold nodded, still passively scanning the area around him. 'Yes, I was warned that that may be the case and I should have suspected that the ACEs would combine. I had thought that the humans would have done the hunting. I don't like it, but I will do what is needed. So if there are more of Tengu, what is the plan, Bing?'

  'We like you, Harold, but you have only been amongst us for three weeks. Let us say that we will send only one back intact. He will be damaged and messed up, but intact.'

  Harold quickly looked at the cat, noting a smug look on his face. 'So, I am to presume that this is a little side play by the Games Board as possible payback for what Basalt and crew did to them over the last few years, considering that this village is Marko's home? A little reminder that they can do anything they like with impunity.'

  Bing nodded and agreed. Then added: 'But of course we look after our own, so I would not worry too much. What weapons do you have at your disposal, Harold?'

  This time Harold allowed himself a little smile as he said, 'Well, Bing, you don't know me and I don't know you, so how about we both see what the day brings us?'

  Bing laughed in a tone that relayed acceptance and companionship. 'Well said, Harold. You catch on fast. Now, Tengu, or at least one of them, is about to appear. Watch the fence on the far side of the senior school.'

  Harold gasped suddenly. 'I did not see if he was in Jenna's class!I will kill that bastard if he touched her!'

  'Yes, he did and all of your nanotes in that class have been compromised or destroyed. They sent you no information that he was in the classroom just as the Games Board wanted it. Don't worry, we have a sophisticated clean-up team in place to remove whatever he put on her. She is safe. Don't concern yourself as I think that this day is only just beginning. Behold a bad-tempered little monster!'

  They could both now see Tengu climbing up through the leaves on the fence. Emerging at the top, he walked quickly across the surface just as the leaf suddenly enfolded him and smashed him into the trunk again and again until the obviously enraged Tengu finally tore through the thin, tough plant structure. He rolled on the ground as another leaf shot downwards, smashing him into the grass which promptly fired thousands of silica shards into his skin. He then lost control of his camouflage system, becoming plainly visible to the dozens of children in the senior school who were pressed up against the windows, wondering what the commotion was about. A fraction of a second later, the windows armoured themselves and the screeching Tengu launched himself into the air, leaping from plant to plant as each one tried very hard to damage or entangle him.

  Harold looked on in wonder when the parking area surface seemed to explode upwards, with fine roots grasping at Tengu as he exploded with anger: blades flashed open along his arms and legs, slashing and stabbing at every plant that attacked him. Finally, he made it onto the top of one of the Games Board's vehicles where he sat for a few long moments, obviously gathering his wits.

  'Wow! Bing! What was that about? How come I have never been attacked that way while here? And why did the grass not react against him when he first arrived?'

  Bing laughed. 'We requested a suppression of the standard reaction to a dangerous predator from the village AI and her biohazards systems when he first arrived. We wanted a nasty surprise for him when he thought himself safe, arrogant prick that he is! Do you remember being given a series of odd but quite pleasant drinks when you first arrived?'

  Bing was sitting right next to Harold, having moved as soon as Tengu had appeared.

  'Yes, Bing. Marie said that they would help my adjustment to the local environment. Did not understand that they were really bio-inoculations. So what else do you have in store?'

  The large cat smiled in a merciless way and Harold felt a tiny bit sorry for Tengu.

  'Look, Harold. He is not very bright, is he? Almost feel like shouting a warning but the dogs are having too much fun!'

  Harold could not make out what the dogs were yelling at Tengu but they were holding his attention as a large snakelike series of roots pushed up through the ground and slithered soundlessly towards the bright red and black dragon. Just as Tengu leapt towards the dogs, the roots struck with the ends parting to entangle him while hundreds of others with hair-fine ends probed fiercely all over his skin, plucking out the hard silica shards and using the pinholes to burrow deeply inside him, shutting down his muscles. In seconds he was completely captive and at the village Al's mercy.

  Bing pointed at the bound Tengu and said, 'You have not met the local AI yet, have you, Harold?"'There is an excellent example of what she can do and why it is such a bad idea to piss her off.'

  Harold allowed a grimace to show and nodded. 'Yes, I hear you on that, Bing. So why did the security detail in the other vehicle not respond?'

  'They can't. While everyone else was watching Tengu, they were locked inside their vehicle. The wonders of bioengineered spider types and their web material! And now we have the director and crew wondering what they are going to do. OK, let's tie you into the alternative local network, shall we, Harold? That way you can listen in on the commotion. Oh, and no doubt, being who you are, you probably have a gift for Tengu?'

  Harold smiled at the cat and nodded.

  'So I am to presume that you would like Tengu's eyes open, with the intrusion fail-safes removed, so you can laser some interesting software into him?'

  Harold nodded again, wondering how the cat knew so much. 'Very well, Harold, give me a second or two.'

  Harold looked across to see the director staring helplessly at the prone form of Tengu held above the vehicles. The man had opened his wrist unit and was conversing and gesticulating with his free hand. The third vehicle started to move backwards to find itself blocked by more of the rapid-moving roots, which jammed the wheel. The vehicle's turbine sounded shrilly as it then tried to lif t off the ground, but was restrained. Harold heard the machine slow down to an idle. Seconds later, the local Administration heads arrived looking more than a little peeved and demanding to know what was happening, and why an obviously hostile ACE was in the company of the Games Board and why had they not been informed of its presence.

  Harold then saw Tengu's eyes being uncovered and opened. Harold sped up his mind to its maximum, made all his protective systems fully operational, then isolated a disposable part of his brain from the rest of himself. He magnified his vision a thousandfold to find a tiny part of Tengu's left eye and fired a laser query signal into
it. Almost immediately he received the reply and a fraction of a second later lasered back a three terabit block of data directly into Tengu's operating system. He saw that the data had been received, carefully searched the disposable unit in his brain for any back contamination, then reintegrated himself.

  Once he had mentally slowed down again he looked at Bing. 'That part of my mission is completed. I just need a few more seconds to get at one of the monitors to muddy up the waters a little, and I am done.'

  'OK, Harold, we will have Games Board combat aircraft over us in about two minutes maximum. Whatever you need to do, do it quickly!'

  Harold focused back into the classroom to see that the female monitor was talking to the children about her latest mission. Ithad been on a distant rocky asteroid, where the two opposing forces had had a daylong battle, wearing spacesuits and firing at each other with rifles and other kinetic weapons, while in almost zero gravity. IfHarold had not been so busy, he would have stopped to watch ... the battle looked fantastically chaotic and entertaining with the weapons' recoil tumbling the firers. Instead, he focused on the monitor's personal device -which was outputting an audiovisual signal to the wall screen -and looked for the best reflective segment on her eye camera's surface.

  At the same time, he used an eye laser to broadcast seemingly innocuous music into the room, which was absorbed by Rebecca's necklace; it energised a tiny gnat-sized craf t to rapidly assemble from the components on the torc's surface. The craft lifted off and flew undetected to the monitor. 'Itlanded on the lens of one of her eye cameras where it dissolved, changing the camera's data-protection filter. Access was then enabled for a large data file to be lasered across by Harold directly into her central primary subconscious. Her systems recognised the incoming information only as normal feedback from what she herself was transmitting to the screen and, together with the music -which her system recognised only as radio waves originating from the local Games Board station -the monitor had a growing appreciation that music, in all its forms, was a wonderful sensation that she should indulge herself in. A minute later the nanote material on the lens reassembled itself as the gnat and flew off, returning to the carving and leaving no trace of itself on the monitor.

  In the few moments that Harold had taken to complete his mission for Basalt and its crew, the director, the recruiter and the male monitor who was recording everything, together with a crowd of school and Administration staff were arguing about what had happened to Tengu. The village Al, seeing the whole performance as just the first act, withdrew the entangling roots and allowed a badly bruised and confused Tengu to move freely on the ground once again. He got up and climbed as quickly as he could manage into the nearest Games Board vehicle and closed the door. Two compact, single-seater, open-cockpit fighters slowly and tightly orbited the Games Board group, their weapons deployed.

  'That was an interesting result, Harold. Unexpcted. So what did you give Tengu?'

  Harold glanced at the cat, saying, 'A very beautiful piece of music composed by Fritz Vinken and designed to soothe what can only be described as a deeply troubled mind. The rest is up to him now. In time it will give Tengu a conscience of sorts. Time will tell.'

  Looking to the east, both ACEs could see the front edge .of the approaching storm roiling over the horizon.

  'About to get a whole lot more exciting for everyone, Harold,' said Bing with a smile. 'See how the locals are looking anxiously at the sky, then at the bases of the native trees and vegetation? Oh, and just to make things more interesting, Petal, the district Al, says that there are definitely two more of Tengu and she has strong indications that one is still in the third vehicle and the other is trying to sneak up the road. Fat chance. The stupid bastard is going to get a hell of a fright in a few minutes!'

  Harold was staring intently at the third vehicle as its doors opened. Four individuals in light armour suits quickly clambered out, followed by two spherical black monitors that had no discernible features connecting them with their human origin. They immediately rose up above the Administration buildings on their antigravity units, being propelled skywards by their small swivel-mounted turbofans.

  Harold switched his attention to the cat beside him. 'Hey, the birds have all vanished! Even those big raptors have headed to their roosts. What is about to emerge? The only data I have is the emergence of a swarm of crab beetle types. Aha! I see, Bing. Although it is a bit early for their seasonal mating flights, nevertheless the conditions right now are optimum! Are we safe here?'

  The cat shook his head. 'No, but I would say we have only ten or so minutes before we should move back into our home trees. See, they are starting to seal themselves. But we have contingency plans, so if we have to go to ground out here, we will be OK.'

  Harold looked up at the canopy of the; giant trees. The uppermost leaves were slowly expanding to link to each other and form a tough, flexible cover over the village. He looked at the fungi-formed Administration structure and saw that it too was reconfiguring to shrug off the worst the weather could deliver.

  The school bells chimed and over the course of the next five minutes the daycare, kindergarten and other schools emptied, with the children being marched back to the village by their carers. As they passed the Games Board group, the children chorused goodbye. The Administration officials were verging on being rude in their attempt to get the director and his charges to leave as quickly as possible, but the director was insisting on staying to view what was about to happen. Finally the officials nodded, wished them well and walked inside, leaving the Games Board staff to their own devices.

  The four child recruits were ushered into one of the vehicles, which left quickly and headed back to the airfield. Minutes later, a large crablike Games Board lif ter arrived overhead with ten more monitors being deployed from its sides before it hovered over the car park area to drop an Event Management Centre onto the hardened surface. The director and the recruiter waited for the centre to unfold and anchor itself before entering. The four-person armoured security detail took up their stations at its entrances. The two monitors who had been the first to arrive with the director, changed their upper body clothing from formal attire to the semi armoured field clothing, then also left to go to their appointed areas.

  The cat shook his head. 'Dummies! Yes, this might be a rare opportunity to witness the crab beetle flight in daylight, but they are going to get their arses chewed off! Those native insects: first they fly, then they screw and then, and then, my friend Harold, they eat! They eat anything that will deliver protein and will go a long way through what is no good to them to get it.'

  Harold looked closely at Bing. 'I dare not query the local database, Bing. Please send me the knowledge.'

  An instant later, he started to learn about the creature as Bing lasered the information into his eyes. In its initial grub-like stages it will burrow into any form of native foliage, tunnelling its way down, consuming the living tissue, until it reached the roots where it would emerge into the soil to eat anything smaller than itself until it reached an intermediate stage as a medium-sized beetle that could exist on the surface. 'It would continue to grow for several seasons as it foraged through the undergrowth and waited for the optimum conditions for the mating flights. Tens of millions of the creatures would take to the sky at once, right before a thunderstorm that would assist in spreading the next generation.

  'So, Bing, the storm is only a few kilometres away. The beetles will be taking to the air very soon?'

  'Yes, Harold. Now, remain very still, they are already climbing the trees and that includes this one!'

  Harold opened the sensitivity of all his faculties to the maximum, and could hear thousands of small claws being driven into the tree bark as the 100-millimetre-long creatures climbed the tree and started to fly up into the increasingly strong winds which drove them towards the storm.

  'So they must have smelt us surely, Bing?'

  'Yes, but they are not interested in us just yet. Being true h
ermaphrodites they just want to mate - to screw and be screwed, some might say! But as soon as the last of them are airborne, we had better be gone. And that's the last of them from this tree.'

  Harold looked out from the tree to see the GB monitors orbiting vast dense swarms of the creatures. A movement caught his eye and he turned to see the GB airship lifting off and heading quickly out to sea to avoid the storm. He looked curiously at what appeared to be a violent mini-sandstorm occurring hundreds of metres down the road which was producing explosive sprays of sand and grit in strange patterns. Bing saw what he was looking at and laughed hard. Further recognition codes suddenly arrived in Harold's brain and a fraction of a second after he activated them he watched as the two local panthers, whom he had only briefly met a few times, giving one of the Tengu a very hard time of it. The action was blindingly fast, even by his standards, but for every action the Tengu dragon took, exhibiting extraordinary martial arts skills, the two panthers worked in coordination to match and better him. Within a few minutes, the fight was over as a limp and beaten Tengu was dragged by the neck into the bushes from where'he had obviously been ambushed.

  'Are they going to kill him, Bing?'

  'No, Harold, that one goes back to its creator so we can re-educate him. The big cats will have him sedated and underground in a few moments. The one who is just about to leave the third vehicle, that one we kill. Care to join me? The dogs and cats are audibly tracking him. I presume that you are equipped with Master Marko's garottes?'

  The dogs were barking in order to paint the opening door with acoustic vibrations, which the surrounding ACEs could map. Harold looked at the sound-generated images of the camouflaged Tengu as he emerged from the vehicle, stretching and then pulling various pieces of equipment from the vehicle and attaching them to himself, seemingly unaware that he was being watched.

  A large and very beautiful owl called Owen, who Harold had met on many occasions while hunting the winged rats, suddenly appeared flying at full speed from the home trees to swoop down above the Tengu and neatly defecate on him, much to the dragon's tremendous indignation. The Tengu tried to leap into the air so that he could see the rapidly departing pearl-white bird, but found himself entangled by fine tree roots. Furious, he brought his weapons online, firing his arm-mounted multiple lasers down into the ground. Freeing himself, he jumped onto the car roof, trying to wipe the bird faeces off himself. He shrieked loudly in frustration when he realised that, with every wipe, he allowed the thick fluid to destroy more of his chameleon camouflage.